Memories of Ghosts
by Remember How I Used To Be
Summary: It was a broken down old building in an age of space travel and flying cars to every Muggle that saw it. It was nothing special, except to one curious girl with no past or future. KBxOW Some DMxKB
1. Enter the World of History

**Summary: It was a broken down old building in an age of space travel and flying cars to every Muggle that saw it. It was nothing special, except to one curious girl with no past or future. **

**A/N: I realize that nothing happened in 1998 called the Radicals' Revolution, but for my purposes, I have tweaked history to fit the storyline. Leave me alone about it. **

"What's that thing over there?" Katie asked the salesman.

The man shaded his eyes with one hand and peered off in the direction his client had pointed. All he could see was an old abandoned building that had been there as long as he or anyone else could remember. The wood was rotting and breaking down and the records said that the place was hazardous to people.

"It's nothing," he told her lightly. "It's going to be torn down if the land doesn't sell soon."

Katie couldn't believe her ears. Tear down such a beautiful old castle? Why? She looked at the price the man had listed on his data pad. It was a bit steeper than she really wanted.

A few minutes and several offers later, Katie and the salesman had reached a deal. The salesman vanished the moment the sale was complete, leaving Katie totally on her own in the middle of her new property, staring up at the old castle.

"I wonder why this building has so little value to anyone," she murmured as she began trudging towards the building at the other end of the lake.

The castle had multiple towers with one sitting a fair distance from the main building. A small hut lay just outside of the forest's edge. Everything looked so strange to a girl used to gleaming cities and organized farmland. For some reason, no one had dared to touch this land in the process of making the world one big city. Everyone said it was cursed. Land rolled out around the castle for miles, utterly untouched by mankind for over a century. No one had dared to set foot on the land until Katie had come along.

Katie stepped up to the large perfectly preserved wooden doors leading into the castle. She shoved against the doors. They wouldn't budge. She shoved harder and the door began to move inward with a deep groan.

"Hello?" The call echoed off of the walls of a huge entrance hall. It looked as though someone had kept the place spotless. The floors were free of debris and the stairs and railings were uncovered by dust. Candles burned brightly in a chandelier and torches burned in their holders.

"Hello?" Katie called again.

"What—what's that?" a voice called out. "Hey, look, chaps! Some girl is here!"

"A girl you say?" another voice called back. "By Merlin's beard! There is someone here!"

"After all this time!" someone else said.

"Who are you?" Katie called into the emptiness of the hall.

"We are the inhabitants of the Hogwarts Gallery," yet another voice called to her.

"Hogwarts Gallery?" Katie looked around her wildly. She could see no one anywhere around her, just lines and lines of paintings on the walls. They moved, but looked so fake. The ones in her old home were so much better.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"We're in the paintings, dear," a kindly voice said from just above her head.

Katie spun around and stared at the picture. A stately looking woman sat on the back of a pawing horse. Katie's paintings had never talking, neither had her pictures.

"Why do you look so shocked, my dear?" the woman asked kindly. "We're just normal paintings."

"I've never seen a talking painting before," Katie managed.

"Really?" All of the painting people looked at each other in surprise.

"You must have seen one of our kind," the woman said. "We're everywhere."

Katie shook her head. "No talking paintings exist, except in the old stories."

"The old stories?" The painting people exchange glances yet again.

"The stories from the Radicals' Revolution of 1998," Katie explained. "They found strange paintings in an underground building. The pictures screamed as they were burned according to all of the records. The building was so strange, of course, that it was buried by explosives."

"The Ministry," the woman murmured solemnly.

"Did the old stories mention any people?" one of the other painting people asked.

Katie nodded. "A few do. They tell of people with dangerous powers fighting against revolutionaries. The stories are so strange though. They tell of an old woman, the last woman standing, who tried to escape by turning into a cat. There is also mention of a black-haired, green-eyed boy with a lightening bolt scar on his forehead that everyone seemed to rally around. The weirdest story is about a girl who vanished from plain view, never to be seen or heard from again."

The painting people exchanged more glances and the murmuring continued.

The woman on horseback studied Katie for a long time.

"You must be a witch," she said finally. "How else could you find this place?"

"A witch!?" Katie was in a panic. Even though the leaders of the Radicals' Revolution had been thrown from power, some still feared the ancient powers enough they would do anything to erase their existence.

"That's a good thing here," the woman told her in a reassuring tone. "This was once a school for your kind." She sighed sadly as she looked around her. "But it has been empty since the attack on the Ministry, the underground building in your old stories. Everyone perished in the fight for the power of fear is far stronger than even the strongest of our kind."

The other painting people nodded sadly. The hall was silent for a long moment.

"I suppose we should get you acquainted with Hogwarts, my dear," the woman said, brightening. "After all, you plan to stay a while. Don't you?"

Katie shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

The woman smiled brightly. "That's settled then! You may call me 'Evangelina.'"

"Er, thanks. My name's Katie," Katie told her.

"Excellent! Follow me, please," Evangelina told the young woman. She moved from painting to painting on her horse, through the halls and up stairs.

The first room she led Katie to was a huge hall with four long tables running the length of the room and a table at the far end of the room. Katie looked up and stared. There seemed to be no ceiling, rather a clear blue sky sat above her. An occasional cloud seemed to drift across the flat blue.

"This room was once filled with hundreds of young students, teachers, and ghosts," Evangelina said quietly. "It was the Great Hall, the Banquet Hall, the Yule Ballroom, whatever you wanted."

She led Katie deeper into the castle, showing her old classrooms and offices. They passed a small bit of swamp roped off in one of the corridors.

"Why is there a swamp there?" Katie asked a bit bewildered by its location.

Evangelina smiled sadly before replying, "Fred and George Weasley left a much larger swamp in this corridor before fleeing Hogwarts during the Ministry of Magic's reign of terror."

"Whatever happened to them?"

"Fred was killed by an explosion during the Final Battle against Voldemort, and George," her voice trailed off. "No one knows what happened to him exactly. It is suspected that he was killed during the attack on the Ministry during the Revolution."

She stopped before the portrait of a fat lady.

"Password?" the woman asked in a very tired voice.

"Now, now, Arabella," Evangelina scolded. "You know very well that there is no password any longer. Just let the girl in, she's living here now and should get acquainted with the whole castle."

The fat lady sighed and her portrait swung forward to reveal a doorway behind it.

"Where you are going, I cannot follow," Evangelina announced. "No danger awaits you there, only questions."

Katie nodded and stepped through the portrait hole. A short hall led into a room completely decorated in gold and maroon. A fire burned brightly in the hearth, bathing the room in gentle golden light. Against one wall was a trophy case with pictures of people in what appeared to be sporting gear. They were smiling and clapping each other on the back.

She peered closely at the moving pictures. Some of the images were in black-and-white, suggesting they were much older than most of the pictures. One picture in particular caught her eye. It was one of the more recent pictures, or so it seemed. It was so strange. Like de ja vu, only not.

"This is so weird," Katie muttered as she stared at the picture. Wearing the strange sporting gear was a girl who could have been Katie. The girl had the same straight brown hair and hazel eyes. A young man with short brown hair and dark brown eyes had one arm slung over her shoulder. They were laughing and poking each other.

Gingerly, Katie reached out and picked up the picture and turned it over in her hands. She slid off the back looking for a date and some bit of information about the people in the picture. On the back in neat, legible handwriting was the date October 29, 1992. All over the backing was the messy scrawled handwriting of at least two different people with a third person joining at the very end.

_Stop poking me, Oliver Wood!_

_**Why, Kates?**_

_That's Katie Bell to you, Mr. Wood. At least until you stop poking me._

_**But you're so pretty when you're flustered, Katie, darling.**_

_Oliver!_

_**Oh stop it, you two! It's bad enough that we have to watch you flirt all through practice!**_

The mini conversation ended, but Katie stared in stunned silence at the words. The girl was Katie Bell. The girl looked exactly like her and had the same name. But then again, it could be purely coincidental. After all, Katie was a very common name for years and Bell was not an unusual name. But still . . .

Katie wandered slowly up the spiral staircase at on end of the room. She passed the door marked 'Boys' and continued up the stairs to a door marked 'Girls.' The door opened silently inward, allowing Katie and unobstructed view of the room. Different door branched out from the main room she had entered, each marked with a year. The rooms for years 1-6 were empty, but in room 7 Katie found trunks and suitcases sitting on the beds.

Of the five beds in the room, one had a double load of luggage.

"I'm so glad to see you back, Katie," a tiny voice said from behind a pile of trunks. "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten all about me."

Katie stared at the pile of trunks for a moment and then gingerly peered over the top. In the middle of the pile was a tiny figurine. It was the figurine of a young man who looked identical to the young man in the picture she had just been looking at. He was resting lightly in the center of a pillow with a tiny magazine.

"You have no idea how hard it is to read the same articles over and over for over two hundred years," said the young man, Oliver Katie's mind supplied. "I love Quidditch, but even I'm not that obsessed." He stood up and jumped over to a ladder, shimmying up to stand on the trunks at eye level with Katie.

Katie stared at the little man for several long minutes.

"I have got to cut back on my alcohol intake," Katie muttered under her breath. Apparently the one drink she'd had at her going away party had affected her more than she'd previously believed.

"Didn't you miss me at all?" the tiny Oliver asked, a bit of a Scottish accent beginning to show through.

"How could I?" Katie asked. "I didn't even know you existed until a moment ago."

Tiny Oliver looked hurt and turned to head back to his little "room."

"Look," Katie said, catching the figurine about the waist, "I don't exactly have many memories. I was found wandering the streets of London six years ago with no memory of who I was or where I'd come from. All I had was the name 'Katie Bell' in my head. There have been so many Katie Bells in the past two hundred years that the authorities finally gave up trying to identify me. I know nothing about my past and suddenly I arrive here where things seem so familiar and yet nothing looks familiar."

"So you don't know me?"

Katie shook her head. "I'm guessing you're the Oliver Wood mentioned in the picture downstairs."

Tiny Oliver nodded and then looked slightly guilty.

"Well, that's sort of true," Tiny Oliver admitted. "Actually I'm a toy of Oliver Wood that the real Oliver Wood gave you to remember him by while he was out on tour playing Quidditch. I'm just to give you someone to talk to until he gets back."

Katie lowered her open palm so the man could step onto it. The small Scotsman smiled gently at her, a smile that Katie was sure she would melt at if a real human had given it to her.

"So, can you show me around the place?" Katie asked.

"Sure can, love!" Oliver said excitedly. He clambered up her sleeve to rest on her shoulder, right next to her ear.


	2. Enter the World of Magic

**Summary: It was a broken down old building in an age of space travel and flying cars to every Muggle that saw it. It was nothing special, except to one curious girl with no past or future.**

Between the tiny Oliver Wood on her shoulder and Evangelina in the paintings, Katie had a very in depth tour of most rooms. Occasionally Evangelina was more helpful than Oliver, as he was too busy making snide comments regarding a group of people known as Slytherins. Other than that, he was very helpful. It was Oliver who had introduced Katie to the House Elves, strange little creatures with enormous bat-like ears and bugged-out eyes. It was them who had kept the castle in such wonderful condition.

Today Oliver, Evangelina, several of the other paintings, and the numerous ghosts that had begun to re-emerge were going to begin training Katie as a witch.

Katie wasn't sure she really liked the idea, but they had assured her that she would never have any need to leave the castle so there was very little chance of her being discovered. So Katie had reluctantly agreed to learn magic.

"First thing's first!" Evangelina exclaimed. "We need to get you a wand. Nick, would you take Miss Bell down to the storage rooms where Minerva hid the wands."

"Most certainly! This way, Miss Bell!" the old ghost called jovially. Katie nervously followed the ghost into the dark basement below the classrooms.

"Why were all the wands hid down here?" Katie asked, more to herself than anyone as she smacked into a wooden beam for the third time and tried to comb thick cobwebs from her hair.

"To protect them from the Radicals," Nick replied easily. "Minerva didn't want those barbarians getting a hold of such valuable things as wands before the next generation of witches and wizards could be trained up."

"Oh."

Katie didn't say anything more until they entered a small chamber at the end of the cluttered hall. Rows and rows of long, narrow boxes extended out in every direction.

Nick muttered under his breath as the two of them stared at the mess of boxes. There was no sense of organization to any of it.

Katie took a cautious step forward and picked up a box. She blew the dust off before opening it. The wand inside was a warm red color about 10 inches in length. As she gripped the wand a pile of empty boxes beside her exploded into flames.

"I don't think that's the one for you," Nick coughed, staring at the smoldering pile of boxes. Katie nodded her agreement and quickly set it aside.

Three hours and 120 wands later, Katie was getting extremely irritated. Not a single one of the wands had been willing to work for her. Only 63 boxes remained to be tried, or so Nick said. Katie sighed, picked up the next wand and got another violent result.

All too quickly the pair had gone through every single wand in the basement and not one of them had worked for Katie. Now all that was left was to try making a wand.

Nick seemed nervous but Katie figured not much else could go wrong. The wand cores were labeled and placed in neat rows along the shelves above a workbench at the back corner of the room. Hundreds of wands shells lay in the boxes around her.

"What kind of wood were most of those wands?" Katie asked over her shoulder.

"Holly, ash, willow, maple, walnut, mahogany, birch, yew, and rosewood," Nick replied.

Katie dug through the box marked "Experimental Woods." She dug through the cold wooden shafts and then stopped suddenly. Her fingers brushed a warm, soft-feeling yet very hard piece of wood. She pulled the wand shell out of the box and into the light. It was nearly 11 inches long and the label on the tip read "African Blackwood." Her small hand wrapped perfectly about the thickest part of the shaft. Now for the core.

She had Nick read off the cores that were used in the other wands and was left with three cores she might be able to use: one Chimera scale, one Ocammy feather, and a handful of Ashwinder Ashes.

The vial with the Chimera scale seemed to glow whenever Katie brushed her hand over it. Neither of the other two reacted.

The young woman examined the vial for a moment. Then set about determinedly making her wand.

**Four Hours Later**

Katie smiled with tired satisfaction at the shining black wand in her hand. The whole thing felt perfect. Nick was even impressed by the wand. Neither of them were quite sure how Katie had actually managed to make the wand, but neither intended to complain.

"I suppose the others are probably getting worried," Katie murmured thoughtfully.

"No, Miss Bell," Nick said. "I'd informed them of your task so they could go about other things while they waited."

"Thank you." Katie trudged back up the long hallway to where the others had reassembled.

Tiny Oliver was especially intrigued by Katie's handmade wand. The others were interested that she was able to actually make the wand.

The ghost of a young woman was the first to begin Katie's teaching. Surprisingly Katie had little problem picking up any of the spells. They seemed to be almost second nature to her. In fact, at one point she actually knew a spell before anyone taught it to her. No one was quite sure how that was possible, but they did everything they could to encourage these memories.


	3. Enter the World of Quidditch

**Summary: It was a broken down old building in an age of space travel and flying cars to every Muggle that saw it. It was nothing special, except to one curious girl with no past or future. **

Katie sat in the magical library of Hogwarts flipping through random books the ghosts and Oliver had picked out for her.

"You must read this one!" Oliver exclaimed. He tried to pull a thin green book out from beneath the ginormous pile of volumes on Wizarding world history, Herbology, Ancient Runes, Potions, and Astronomy. The stack teetered dangerously and began sliding toward the oblivious figurine.

"Look out!" Katie snatched Tiny Oliver away from the books as they crashed onto the table. She gave him a look before moving the heavy books aside and picking up the small book.

Across the cover in gold lettering was the title.

"_Quidditch through the Ages_." Katie read out loud. She gave Oliver another look before opening the book. The first thing she noticed was the list of people that had checked out the book. At the very top of the list in an untidy scrawl was O. Wood, 9 April. As Katie scanned down the list she recognized A. Johnson and F. Weasley as people who had also been on the Gryffindor team according to the picture in the Common Rooms. But what caught her eye was the K. Bell on 19 October right in the middle of the list. She opened the book and began reading.

She burst out laughing when reading about the Hollyhead Harpy captain Gwendolyn Morgan braining Captain Rudolf Brand with her broom after he'd proposed to her. Oliver looked at the page she was reading and just smiled.

The moment Katie closed the book Oliver was urging her to go outside. He directed her to a shed. With a creak and a groan the door to the shed fell open, revealing four racks of brooms and three trunks stack against the back wall.

"Grab that broom," Oliver told her, pointing to the nicest looking broom in the pile. Katie picked up the broom with a dubious glance at the broken tail straws but followed Oliver's instructions to a large, open field.

"Okay, so you really need to learn to fly," Oliver told her bluntly. He instructed her to mount the broom and kick off from the ground.

When she first tried, the broom refused to do more than hover a centimeter or so above the ground. On her second attempt she managed to coax a bit more height out of the old bundle of twigs. Before she could try again, the broom took off in a jerky, zigzag flight pattern. Katie hung on for dear life as the crazy thing twisted and turned as if purposely trying to knock her off.

"Stop it, you stupid bundle of kindling, or I'll light you on fire," she snapped at it. The jerking stopped immediately and she was able to glide gently to the ground.

"Well," she said bluntly, "that wasn't the most fun I've ever had, but it wasn't bad enough to warrant never trying again."

"You simply must keep trying," Oliver insisted. "Every morning you should go for a fly. It would do you a lot of good."

"Right, if the broom doesn't go homicidal on me again, I'll try again," she told him. Katie stashed broom in the closet and started to leave the pitch.

"Wait!" Oliver cried.

"What?" She gave the figurine a displeased look. Oliver seemed to be considering his next words.

"Never mind," he said quickly. "You should probably wait." He gave Katie a smile. With a sigh she headed for the castle to finish the homework assigned to her by her ghostly teachers.


	4. Enter Draco Malfoy

**Summary: It was a broken down old building in an age of space travel and flying cars to every Muggle that saw it. It was nothing special, except to one curious girl with no past or future. **

**A/N: I discovered as I was writing this chapter that I had previously used plot details from DH, but was completely ignoring the Epilogue J.K. Rowling oh-so-sweetly added. Note the sarcasm with which that last part was said. Due to the fact that the Epilogue was one of the four points at which I hurled DH across my bedroom (The first three being the death of Snape, the death of Remus and Tonks, and the death of Fred, which was also accompanied by much crying and screaming and general threatening of J.K. Rowling's life.), I have decided to completely eliminated the Epilogue from any future consideration in writing this story. Have a happy read!**

Katie was up in the astronomy tower one dark night, checking over her star charts with her ghostly professor, when she spotted a moving light far below. It appeared in the forest, drifting in and out of the trees for a few minutes before moving up the steep hills to the castle.

"What is that?" Katie asked, alarmed. Had someone from the Radicals found her? Her professor motioned for her to stay put and flew quickly down to investigate. Moments he reappeared beside Katie and herded her into the castle. The ghosts did not recognize the man coming towards the castle and had absolutely no ability to deter him. He was most certainly a wizard, and a powerful one at that. It was up to Katie to defend the castle against him if he was a dark wizard.

The ghosts, including Katie's professors, vanished silently as the castle doors opened. The young woman shrank back into the shadows as a young man entered the hall. He pushed shut the heavy doors and shook his white-blonde hair to knock out a few stray leaves. He extinguished the light from his wand.

With a silent command, Katie sent a binding spell at the young man. Thick ropes coiled around the boy before he could even realize that she was there. His wand clattered to the floor and rolled away from him.

"Who are you?" Katie demanded, stepping into the light, her wand pointed at his chest.

"Katie? Katie Bell? Is that you?" The man seemed surprised to see her. "You're alive."

Katie's jaw tightened, she didn't recognize this man, but he knew her.

"Bloody Slytherin," Oliver hissed, speaking for the first time.

"You know him?" Katie asked the figurine.

"Who are you talking to?" the blonde asked from the floor. He twisted around, trying to see what the small figure was. A small smile appeared on his lips as he recognized the small figurine.

"You still have that figure Oliver gave you? I would have thought that would quit working after a while," he said, relaxing against the ropes.

"You knew the real Oliver?" Katie asked. She eyed the man speculatively. If he had known about the figure and recognized her, then that would mean . . .

"He worked with Oliver and the others during the Revolution," Tiny Oliver admitted. "His name is Draco Malfoy. He's on our side."

"Never thought I'd see the day Oliver, even his miniature self, would vouch for me in anything positive," the man, Draco, chuckled from the floor. "Would you mind untying me? It's rather uncomfortable down here."

With a flick of her wand, the ropes vanished. The young man picked up his wand and stood. He allowed Katie to examine him for a long moment.

Draco was tall and slender. His blonde hair was bound back in a loose tail, a few tendrils touching his cheeks. The brown suit he wore was old and worn. Despite his haggard appearance, he held himself like one who was very rich.

"How've you been, Katie?" he asked when her gaze returned to his face.

"Okay, I guess," she answered nervously. A strange look crossed Draco's face.

"You don't remember me?" he asked. His grip on his wand tightened.

"I'm afraid not," she admitted. "I don't remember much of anything. The ghosts have been helping me relearn things I supposedly know and occasionally I remember something on my own, but I'm not even sure of who I am."

Draco regarded her with icy blue eyes for several seconds, as if trying to read her mind. Then he nodded and his grip relaxed again.

"I suppose it's only natural," he said finally. "You'd want to block out all of the horrible things that happened." With that he started down the hallway towards the dungeons.

"Wait!" Katie cried. She started after him. He paused long enough for her to catch up.

"Where are you going?" she asked. He kept walking into the darker passages of the dungeons.

"Slytherin dorms," he answered. "I left my stuff there before the last battle at the Ministry and I'm tired. This new-fangled transportation the Muggles have come up with makes getting any sleep impossible, and I'm exhausted."

"Oh." Katie stopped talking. She followed Draco as far as the entrance to the Slytherin common rooms.

"Look, I can help you with some of your spell work," Draco told her when he finally stopped walking. "But right now I'm so tired I can't think straight. That's probably why you managed to get me with your spell. I haven't been caught by that one in years." He ran one hand through his long blonde hair, pulling more strands out of the tail.

Katie blushed. Was he calling her spell weak?

"Don't look so irritated," he said, without really looking at her. "If you really can't remember a whole lot, then there's no reason for you to get upset over weak spells. You just need to get used to magic again."

He opened the passage into the common rooms.

"Good night, Katie, mini Oliver," he called as she stared after him. The entrance shut after him. Katie was left standing out in the dark corridor.

"Weak spells my arse," Oliver grumbled.

"Oh, hush. He's right you know," Katie told him. "It wasn't that good a spell. If he'd been expecting it I'm sure he could have dodged the thing."

Oliver just grumbled some more.

"At least now I have someone to practice flying with," she pointed out. Oliver just wagged his head from side to side in a gesture of defeat. He couldn't argue with that. He wanted Katie to fly so much.

**The Next Day**

The Great Hall echoed with footsteps as Katie walked down the length of the room towards the front. Off to one side of the dais was an open door from which emanated a warm golden glow. She poked her head inside to find Draco sitting at the table she usually ate breakfast at. He was talking to the Bloody Baron and looking over some papers. The Baron looked rather sad. He just shook his head before vanishing.

"Good morning, Katie," Draco greeted. He stood up. Katie stepped into the room, somewhat awkwardly. Oliver had told her so many awful things about Draco the night before. She wasn't entirely sure if she should trust this blonde stranger.

"I don't bite, contrary to what Oliver told you," Draco told her with a cheeky grin.

"What do you think Oliver told me?" Katie asked, wondering how much of Oliver's stories were true.

"He probably mentioned something about cheating on the Quidditch pitch and being a traitor in between muttering that I'm a sodding git," he guessed as he motioned for Katie to join him at the table.

Katie gave a short laugh.

"I'm right?" Draco's eyebrows raised in surprise. "I know him better than I thought." He shook his head.

For a moment they sat quietly at the table.

"I had been told that everyone died in the Battle for the Ministry," Katie tried finally.

"Really?" Draco looked at her. "Who told you that?"

"The paintings told me the day I arrived. They believe that because I was the first to show up after two hundred years," she admitted.

"I see."

"No," Draco said suddenly, "Not everyone died. I believe that at least ten others survived the battle. They were not among the dead."

"How do you know?" Katie asked curiously.

"Several of the ghosts you may or may not have seen floating about the place are ghosts from the battle," he confided.

"Which ones?" she asked breathlessly.

"I'm not entirely sure how many there are as I have not seen them myself," he answered. "I only know that the Baron has told me there are new ghosts from the Battle. Only one has spoken to him, Su Li. She says that at least ten people completely vanished from the battlefield when all seemed lost. She also made mention that she saw you there."

Katie's eyes widened.

"Me? But that's impossible! I'm not two hundred years old!" She stared at him in disbelief.

"She hinted that you had disappeared from plain sight after being handed something, something you clutched to your chest before vanishing," Draco revealed, his grey eyes sparkling with interest.

"Tell me, other than a name, what you had with you when you came to?"

The young woman shot him a look. "How do you know that I was unconscious as opposed to fully awake?"

Draco leaned back in his chair and regarded her quietly for a long moment.

"I was also found unconscious in the middle of a construction zone," he told her. "The workers assumed I was drunk and moved me to a hospital. Luckily I had landed on a semi-soft surface. When you were transported, you were unconscious and traveling in an upright position as I was. You fell and hit your head, didn't you?"

Blunt force trauma. The doctor's words echoed in her mind. When she'd woken up enough to tell them what she did know, her name, they had said that her memory would probably come back within a year. Six years later she had nothing more than a name and six years of new memories. Sometimes she had those brief flashes of memory, but usually nothing more.

When Katie finally looked up, she found Draco staring intently into her eyes.

"You did," he concluded. "What did you have with you?"

She reached up with trembling fingers to touch the necklace she'd been told had to be pried from her fingers when she was being treated. It had seemed so strange to the medics. The shape was strange and the symbols totally foreign. It seemed to be an old coat of arms. The necklace was a royal blue shield outlined with gold. Two curved bulrushes arched in opposite directions, yet intersecting in two places.

Draco caught the small charm between his fingers and examined it closely. He nodded as if the necklace had just confirmed his suspicions. The necklace fell back against Katie's chest and Draco sat back in chair. He did not explain.

"Su Li died fairly early in the battle, but stayed around the scene for some time to see if anyone would make it out. Comparing her accounts to the public records the Muggles kept of everyone who died, there are at least ten people confirmed surviving the battle," Draco continued. He moved the papers he'd been looking at over to Katie.

"These are the names and pictures of everyone who may have survived the battle according to the Muggles," he told her. "The Muggles kept these lists out for nearly one hundred years in the hopes of catching anyone. Some were actually killed later, but those have been crossed off."

Katie scanned over the lists. They were arranged alphabetically by last name. How the Muggles had discovered the names she did not know, but she did find herself on the first page. She did not recognize the picture, but she knew where it had been taken. It had been taken in London as it had looked two hundred years before. She forced her eyes away and continued looking.

Scanning further, she recognized several more people on the list, including Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet, George Weasley, and Oliver Wood. Another Weasley named Charlie had also survived as well as a young woman named Hermione Weasley. Draco was about half way through the list of missing witches and wizards.

"If we survived, then it is possible that the others survived," Katie said softly.

"It's very possible," Draco agreed. "But if any of the others ended up with blows to the head like yours . . . " he trailed off.

Katie gazed down at the lists.

"But how did we get here?" she asked.

"It was a modification of a Port Key spell. Hermione and I were working together to find something that might save our kind if the battle went sour," he explained. "We were never able to properly test it out, we just had to cast the spell and hope everything worked out in our favour. From what I have seen, everything worked out well."

"Other than the fact that most of the people you and I used to know are dead?" she snapped, suddenly very upset.

"Katie, I'm sorry," he apologized.

"Don't worry about it," she said, abruptly standing up. For some reason, seeing all those faces she was supposed to recognize upset her. Without looking at her new companion again, Katie left the Great Hall.


	5. Enter the DAMMIT, PEEVES!

**Summary: It was a broken down old building in an age of space travel and flying cars to every Muggle that saw it. It was nothing special, except to one curious girl with no past or future. **

**A/N: Okay, this is just a quick update for the story. I really wanted to do a brief chapter to reintroduce Peeves to Katie so here it is. **

Several days had past since Draco's arrival at Hogwarts. Katie was starting to get used to the human presence and was actually quite enjoying herself. Mini Oliver, on the other hand, was not. Needless to say, he sulked a great deal as Katie spent more time with Draco while learning spell work.

One morning, the pair was having breakfast in their usual nook when Draco suddenly froze.

"Does the castle seem to quiet to you?" he asked, a strange and semi-frightened look on his face.

"Noooooo," Katie answered slowly, dragging out her answer. "Should it?"

"Yes," Draco answered swiftly. A resounding crash echoed in from the vicinity of the castle entrance and was accompanied by a great deal of strange chortling. Katie was on her feet, following an already moving Draco towards the noises.

"That sounds more normal," he muttered as they moved.

The pair emerged from the Great Hall and found themselves looking at the wreckage of a rather large urn. Sitting high above the mess, laughing maniacally, was a strange creature in awful, bright-colored clothing completely with bells and an obnoxious orange bowtie.

"Peeves," Draco said simply. The bizarre little man whipped around to look down at the couple.

"Bouncy White Ferret Boy!" Peeves shrieked gleefully. He began pelting the pair with water balloons he had stashed Merlin-only-knows-where.

"That's enough, Peeves!" Draco bellowed. "I'll have the Baron after you if you don't stop this racket and leave us be."

The colorful little spirit muttered quite a few colorful phrases regarding Draco before zipping off down the nearest passage way.

"And suddenly I'm having a lot of memories come back that I'm not entirely sure I wanted," Katie said slowly, staring after the spirit.

"Ah good, so you do remember something!" Draco grinned triumphantly.

"Oh yeah, I remember something," she replied with a sly grin. "One of them involves a boy—a younger version of you perhaps?—being transformed into a white ferret and bounced up and down for several long seconds."

Draco gave her a dirty look before massaging his temples in a weary fashion.

"That was not quite what I had been hoping for," he told her bluntly.

"Oh, I remember a lot about Peeves too," Katie answered brightly. She gave him a devilish grin and skipped back inside to finish her breakfast.

**Later that night**

Katie was just heading back to her room for a nice long sleep when suits of armor started rattling and crashing down around her. Several pieces of chalk nailed her squarely in the back of the head.

"DAMMIT, PEEVES!" she shrieked.

Something seized her nose and that obnoxious voice she'd recognized in the entrance earlier bellowed, "GOT YOUR CONK!"

"Leave off, Peeves!" Katie yelled angrily, pulling her wand out of her jeans. The rattling continued off down the hallway with the laughing spirit.

"I'm almost wishing I didn't remember him and he wasn't here at all," she muttered under her breath, stashing her wand in pocket and continuing up to bed.


End file.
